The Buddhist goddess Laksmi

"The Buddhist goddess Laksmi" depicts Kichijoten, the Japanese Buddhist counterpart to the Hindu Lakshmi, a deity associated with fortune, beauty, and merit. In Japanese iconography Kichijoten typically holds a cintamani jewel and wears the robes of a Tang-style noblewoman, an inheritance from Nara-period continental imagery. Sasajima's treatment likely reduces this devotional figure to a hand-carved silhouette articulated by visible knife marks and the textured pressure of the baren, the tools of his sosaku-hanga practice rather than the polished idiom of commercial nishiki-e. As a student of Onchi Koshiro, Sasajima carved and printed every block himself and refused outside studio assistance. The subject sits within his lifelong concern with Buddhist temple culture — the same impulse that drew him repeatedly to Todai-ji, Horyu-ji, and Kofuku-ji surfaces here in figural rather than architectural form, treating the goddess as another inhabitant of the sacred precincts he otherwise rendered in stone, timber, and roof tile.